February 1 National Moment of Silence

On February 1, 1968, Memphis sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker huddled in the back of their truck to seek shelter from a storm. Suddenly, the truck’s compactor malfunctioned, trapping Cole and Walker and crushing them to death.

The tragedy triggered the strike of the city’s 1,300 sanitation workers. They had warned the city about dangerous equipment but were ignored. They were fed up with poverty wages and racial discrimination. They walked off the job and marched under the banner: I AM A MAN. On February 1, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the accident that killed Cole and Walker, we will observe a moment of silence to honor their memory and sacrifice, as we pick up the mantle from the 1968 strikers in the ongoing fight for racial and economic justice.

Pledge to join us on February 1, 2018 at 1 pm EST (or at a time of your choosing), for a national Moment of Silence.

February 4 event at International Civil Rights Center & Museum

The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) in Greensboro, North Carolina, will honor the role of the courageous Memphis City sanitation workers whose strike in 1968 fused the labor and civil rights struggles for social justice, featuring William “Bill” Lucy, the 2018 ICRCM Alston/Jones International Civil & Human Rights Award recipient and the retired International Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Bill Lucy stood alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in civil rights struggles and Nelson Mandela in opposition to apartheid. Come join the conversation as he discusses the Memphis sanitation workers strike and the power of labor unions.

North Carolina State AFL-CIO President MaryBe McMillan and Triad Central Labor Council President John Crawford will also speak.

“President Trump’s tariffs on solar panels from foreign countries is likely to hurt American workers and consumers, including many in North Carolina. He should reverse his decision.

The Trump administration announced last week that it would impose steep tariffs on imported solar panels, starting at 30 percent next year and ultimately falling to 15 percent by the fourth year, The New York Times reported. But while the panels may be imported, most of the rest of the mechanics and infrastructure used in solar energy production is made in the U.S. Tariffs would likely raise the cost of solar power and slow what has been rapid development in the solar energy industry. It also would result in the loss of roughly 23,000 jobs in the solar industry this year, as well as the delay or cancellation of billions of dollars of investments, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Many of those jobs would be lost in North Carolina, where solar farms now generate income where textile factories and tobacco farms once did”

“It’s a shame that the president seems intent on bringing back the past, at least when it comes to energy production. Other, more advanced countries, such as China and the European Union members, are expanding solar and wind-power production. It would be nice if the USA caught up.”

“…when we look at the likely effects of the tariff’s just imposed on imported solar panels, we have little doubt that the new levy is meant to slow the progress of the solar industry, not to protect American jobs.

The mathematics are pretty clear: The solar panel tariffs announced last week will cost us more than 10 times as many jobs as they’ll save. There are more than 260,000 jobs in the American solar industry, but fewer than 2,000 of them are in the manufacturing sector. Those are the jobs that the president says the tariff will protect and the part of the industry that he says the tariff will cause to grow.”

“Can Donald Trump stand prosperity? Fresh from a government shutdown victory and with the U.S. economy on a roll, the president decided on Tuesday to kick off his long-promised war on imports — and American consumers. This isn’t likely to go the way Mr. Trump imagines.”

The Greensboro News & Record has another good editorial this morning. The subject is North Carolina’s plummeting school performance as measured in Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report. In 2011, when conservatives took over the state legislature, the state ranked 19th in the nation. In the latest report, North Carolina is 40th. As the editorial explains:

“Education Week’s annual Quality Counts report may have its flaws, but it weighs all states by the same standards each year. As far as North Carolina is concerned, it shows a downward trend….

North Carolina’s overall ranking dropped to 40th in the report released this week. It was 39th last year, 37th in 2016, 34th in 2015 and 19th in 2011.

The state has significantly raised teacher pay since then. At the same time, teachers have fewer classroom assistants and less money for classroom supplies. A teaching fellows program was abandoned. Salary bumps for earning master’s degrees were ended. An effort by the legislature to do away with career status, or tenure, failed to survive a court challenge — but it left hard feelings among teachers.

Also, the state has supported a surge in the creation of public charter schools, funneled more than $50 million to private schools through a voucher program and funded two for-profit, virtual charter schools. It seems to some public school advocates that legislators favor these alternatives over traditional K-12 schools.”

After pointing out the troubling gap between the haves and have nots in the state’s public schools, the editorial concludes this way:

“Skeptics who say money doesn’t matter should compare schools in North Carolina’s wealthier counties to those in its poorer communities. There is a difference. The state should do more to close those gaps.

But the legislature has put a higher priority on tax cuts, a policy that arguably encourages job creation in the state’s already thriving urban centers of Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte but does little to help areas that are declining.

Education is a complicated subject, and deeper analysis is needed to determine where North Carolina is slipping and why. It’s clear, however, that the answer isn’t simply to fund more alternatives to K-12 public schools. The charter school record is mixed, and there is virtually no accountability required of tax-funded private religious academies.

We do know that building a skilled workforce, whether it’s prepared for advanced manufacturing jobs or technology positions — skills demanded by such coveted employers as Toyota-Mazda and Amazon — can’t be accomplished on the cheap. If North Carolina is regressing in its willingness to make those investments, it will fall behind even the 10 states that trail us now.

Our cost of living will drop further, leaving many of our residents qualified only for low-paying jobs.”

Folks who haven’t yet gotten fully up to speed regarding the ongoing effort at the General Assembly to raze and remake the North Carolina courts system may want to check out a bipartisan event next week being sponsored by State Representative Cynthia Ball of Wake County.

This is from the announcement distributed by her office:

Threats to an Independent Judiciary

Raleigh, N.C. – On Tuesday, January 30th, Representative Cynthia Ball will host her fifth nonpartisan Town Hall Forum. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from former Chief Resident Superior Court Judge Don Stephens, former NC Supreme CourtJustice Bob Orr, and Dr. David McLennan, Professor of Political Science at Meredith College, about recent laws and proposals that affect the way North Carolinian’s select their judges. This is a highly controversial issue that has stirred the public interest and attracted national media coverage. This Forum will provide the public an opportunity to hear from experts and become better informed.

Anyone wishing to come—regardless of whether they reside in NC House District 49—is invited to attend.

The Town Hall Forum will be held on Tuesday, January 30th, at Meredith College’s Ledford Hall, Room 101, located at 3800 Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. Registration will begin at 6:30 PM. The program will begin promptly at 7:00 PM. There will be ample opportunity for questions from the audience.

In announcing the forum, Rep. Ball noted:

“There may be no more important issue before our General Assembly today than proposals that impact the independence of our judiciary. Redrawing district maps and changing the way we select judges may pose a threat to our democratic system of checks and balances. This Forum will shed important light regarding what is at stake regarding the future of North Carolina’s judiciary.”

Wake is the only county in the state where a defendant has been tried capitally every year for the past three years. Since the beginning of 2016, three of North Carolina’s 10 capital trials have been in Wake County. By contrast, Mecklenburg County — home to Charlotte — hasn’t had a capital trial since 2014.

Why has a county where a jury hasn’t agreed to death sentence in a decade become North Carolina’s leader in death penalty trials? It makes no sense.

It’s not as if a capital trial is the same as a non-capital one with another sentence option thrown in. Adding the death penalty to the mix transforms the entire process. The defendant has a right to two attorneys, the jury members must be chosen based on their willingness to impose a death sentence, the trial lasts weeks longer, and the process costs more than four times as much as a non-capital prosecution.

There’s something else, too, that’s starting to get repetitive in Wake County. At every capital trial, it’s a black defendant having his fate decided by an almost entirely white jury. At the last three capital trials combined, there were only two black jurors.

In fact, we got curious and looked back. Of Wake’s nine failed capital trials since 2009, seven of the defendants were black. And during those years, several white defendants were tried non-capitally for high-profile crimes. Remember Jonathan Broyhill, Joanna Madonna, Jason Young, or Bradley Cooper?

There are just so many reasons for North Carolina’s capital county to leave the shadow of the death penalty behind.

Upcoming Events

Friday, Feb. 16

12:00 PM

Crucial Conversation – Prof. Peter Edelman discusses his new book, Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America

Prof. Edelman is coming to the Triangle to mark the 50th anniversary of Durham-based nonprofit MDC. His visit is the first of a series of MDC-sponsored events focused on ways that Southern leaders can work together to create an Infrastructure of Opportunity that shapes a South where all people thrive.”